Abramowitz creates a textured depth that pulls viewers into the composition, into spaces between the fields of color, the layers of tissue paper, where tribal prints depicting animals and abstract forms swim with words and prisms, mouths and hands and demons, icons and pictograms.

These paintings are an effort to deal in ideas of values and beliefs, the inherent conflict that arises when discussing and adopting values and beliefs…[and] the inherent competition in the variety of beliefs, with the differences in people’s beliefs being a large impediment to shared purpose and progress.

Pirates and Farmers largely deals with Hickey’s disillusionment with the art world that he helped create. Readers might even consider it a book-length resignation letter, except that it was published a full year after Hickey announced his alleged retirement.

The mural depicts a person in front of a row of shotgun houses, holding a grocery bag and a newspaper that reads “Dare to struggle; eat to win!” The image revises an artwork by Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther party.

When Brooke Sinclair of the Houston Food Bank pointed to Mark Menjivar’s photo of a refrigerator stuffed with Styrofoam takeout containers and said, “That’s what my fridge looks like,” I wish somebody had taken a moment to pause and ask, “And what does that say about you, and the society we live in?”

Chris Cascio is unsane. Chris Cascio will get carpal tunnel. Chris Cascio’s skin is a bluish gray from basking before his computer screen. Chris Cascio is a tall emaciated Smurf Krishna. Chris Cascio blows through more X-acto knives in a week than you will in your lifetime. Chris Cascio will cut you paper dolls but you’ll want the leavings, the negative space, the doll-shaped wholes more than you thought passible.

In the early 19th century, a Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville toured the young US and wrote a book called *Democracy in America* which remains pertinent, relevant, and telling to this day. Sometimes it takes an outsider’s eyes to show us how we really are.

A meditation on love
Mixed media: heart, liver, guts, blood, skin, fur.
is famous for not idealizing art and is part of
a movement called “the invisible”. This is the artists
first piece in the Biennale

There is a drive by ‘administrators’ to instrumentalize arts practices: to make art serve some kind of utilitarian function — to press aspects of art making into service, whether in engineering, or what have you, whilst ejecting the free thinking that goes along with art practices. There is a drive to make art practical. I wanted to create a living research space — or at least a space for thinking to occur — free from bastardization.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

There is so much chance for randomness and magic in the public sphere, but our reliance on hand-held computers and mobile devices has seriously curtailed the possibility of that magic entering our lives.

There is a Big Secret Art Thing happening in the garage behind [redacted], a tear-down-to-be in a an ugly & uglier section of Montrose. No one knows about it and no one knows what it means. Go in& look to your left. Daylight hours only. BURN THIS.

We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a few hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.

Smoke paints the air / Swirling images through my mind / Like a whirlpool spin beginning to unwind / And I stand at the edge cautiously awaiting/ As time slips by / Carefully navigating by the stars in the sky / And I sit / And I think to myself/ And on the horizon the sun light begins to climb

Take a simple event: a man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways.

Picture, then, a young, clean, able-bodied, black man posing with a cardboard sign on a street corner. You have seen this before. You have a word for it, “panhandler,” and the moment your brain applies that word to the person before you, you cease seeing because you are now blinded by your preconceived notions.

Other as Lover — A figure lies on its side with something tethered to its neck. The figure takes deep, strained breaths as she struggles to stand. She is simultaneously inflating a heart-shaped balloon. The balloon flies off and lifts the figure who is choking as she’s carried away by love.

You turn the key and enter. You feel uneasy, like you might be doing something wrong. You are grateful that the AC has been left on. You walk past the utility room into the breakfast nook and the kitchen spreads out before you. Maybe if you had a realtor with you…You keep the key and the invitation in your hand, just in case. Voyeurism by invitation.